The Widelux Is Back. Like, really, really back.
Alright, pull up a chair, pour yourself something hot. Preferably coffee. You have some reading to do.
If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you already know I have a handful of cameras I genuinely love and obsess over. The kind of love where I start rambling about them to anyone who will listen. People slowly back away. Right near the top of that list — probably at the top depending on the week — is the Widelux.
I made a video about it a couple years back. I called it My Favourite Camera of 2024. I wasn’t being dramatic. That thing has lived in my bag, on my shoulder, in my hands. It’s been through airports and alleyways, seen a solar eclipse, photographed celebrities.
Every time that little lens sweeps across a scene and I hear that mechanical turret spin, I feel it. So when I tell you what I’m about to tell you, understand I’m writing this with shaky hands and a very large cup of coffee.
The. Widelux. is. coming. back.
Omg.
Not a reissue. Not a digital homage. Not some “inspired by” marketing thing. A real, fully mechanical, swing-lens panoramic film camera. Hand-built. Made to last generations.
A little context, because this camera deserves it.
The Widelux is a swing-lens panoramic film camera from 1958, originally built by Panon. Instead of a traditional shutter, it uses a 26mm lens that physically sweeps across the scene while a slit exposes the film behind it. The result is a 126-degree field of view stretched across a frame that’s twice the width of normal 35mm. It sees the world the way you see the world.
They stopped making them in 2000. The drawings are gone. No blueprints, no spare parts. For years, if you wanted one, you were hunting online and hoping it hadn’t been dropped, over-cranked, or “serviced” by someone’s uncle. (Never spray WD40 into a camera.)
And still — people kept chasing them. For a reason.
This camera does something different.
There are only three shutter speeds. The viewfinder is more of a suggestion. You have to hold it in a weird, awkward way. It’s not a camera that always behaves.
But the images… my god, the images.
A story that always sticks with me: I was photographing Kiefer Sutherland. Total pro. Polite, present, but there’s a wall there. You can feel it. I was trying to find a way in, doing the usual dance, getting nowhere.
Then I pulled out the Widelux.
His whole face changed. “Is that a Widelux?”
Turns out he’d worked with Jeff Bridges years before, and Jeff had given the crew a photo book shot on his Widelux. Kiefer had one.
The second he saw it, everything shifted. We started talking, really talking. The wall just… dropped.
The frame I got in that moment was the best of the entire session. Not because of lighting or composition, but because he was there. Fully there.
That’s what this camera does. It’s not just a tool. It’s a bridge between you and whoever you’re photographing, and somehow between everyone who’s ever used one.
So how do you bring something like this back when the original drawings don’t even exist?
You reverse engineer the whole thing. Part by part.
Taking original cameras apart. Measuring everything. Rebuilding it from scratch.
The new camera, the WideluxX, is being built in Germany. Handmade. Fully mechanical. No plastic. Based on the F8, but with meaningful improvements where they actually matter. The DNA is still there. The magic is still there. The parts that used to fail… those got the attention they deserved.
From everything I’ve seen, they nailed it.
First run: 350 cameras.
Price: $4,400 USD plus shipping and duties. €5,200 incl. VAT in Europe.
First units ship in 6–8 months. Full run within 12 months.
2-year warranty. A real one.
Full refund if they miss the timeline.
First-run cameras are personalized. Not a number — yours.
I’ve seen a lot of camera launches. A lot of “revivals.” A lot of projects that sounded incredible and delivered something… less.
This feels different.
This is a small, obsessed team rebuilding something properly. Not just bringing it back, but actually understanding why it mattered in the first place.
Film isn’t dying. It keeps not dying.
Cameras like this are exactly why.
Maybe their next move is medium format. Guess they’d call that the WideluxXX.
Peter McKinnon
Toronto, Ontario, Canada